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Jewish World Review August 11, 2011 11 Menachem-Av, 5771 What if the President Liked Businesspeople? By Victor Davis Hanson
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
The U.S. stock market has nose-dived. Unemployment is still over 9 percent. Private-sector businesses may have more than The Gross Domestic Product is almost static. Every classical Keynesian remedy -- massive government borrowing and spending ("stimulus"), near-zero interest rates, public works, expanded federal entitlements -- has been tried, failed, and is turning a modest recovery into another recession. Neither the example of the socialist In response to this depressing news, President Obama still offers the same predictably stale sermons: But imagine if President Obama simply stopped diverting blame and tried something different. Vast new finds of natural gas, oil and tar sands have been discovered offshore, in the American West, the Dakotas, Ever since he began campaigning for the presidency, Obama has hectored the private sector -- talking nonstop of higher taxes, "spreading the wealth," "fat-cat" bankers, paying your "fair share," "millionaires and billionaires," "corporate jet owners" and "unneeded" income. Such share-the-wealth tirades were matched with redistributive vendettas. Vast new financial regulations and red tape followed. A new trillion-dollar health-care entitlement was imposed on employers. The National Labor Relations Board is attempting to shut down a new But imagine that the president had instead promoted profit-making -- by cutting red tape, praising entrepreneurs, promising no new taxes or burdens on businesses, and offering incentives to open new plants inside the U.S. In other words, what if small businesses and large corporations believed Obama to be a friend and partner, a leader who wanted them to make big profits, hire millions of workers and enrich the country in the process? In the last three years, the president has increased the national debt by almost
After nearly three years of blaming, apologizing, and explaining what America cannot and should not do, it is past time for a confident President Obama to remind the country that we can do almost anything we wish. Instead of lecturing some Americans about why they owe their old wealth to others, why not inspire them to create even bigger new profits to enrich everyone? And in these tough times, let the first family give up vacationing at Vail, Costa del Sol and In short, President Obama could end the current psychological depression and acrimony by promising to lead from the fore rather than continually harping from far behind.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here. Victor Davis Hanson, a classicist and military historian, is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a recipient of the 2007 National Humanities Medal. Comment by clicking here. © 2011, TMS |
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